‘Porn dog’ sniffs out thumb drives

He struts between desks at the Weber County Sheriff’s office, greeted like a celebrity by colleagues who call out, “Hey, it’s the porn dog!”
That’s right: porn dog, aka smut mutt. He’s the department’s newest crime-fighting tool with a nose that could help put away some of the country’s most predatory and dangerous criminals.

The rambunctious, dumpster-diving, desk-climbing, leash-chewing black Labrador, twice rescued from the pound, is Det. Cameron Harmon’s new secret weapon and partner. Harmon got him at the end of May and named him URL, pronounced “Earl.” It’s a fitting name for what he’s trained to do.

URL sniffs out electronic storage media. Still just a pup, the 18-month-old K-9 is one of fewer than two dozen such dogs in the United States that hunt the unique chemical compounds emitted from flash drives, memory cards, cell phones, iPads and other similar devices.

While dogs like URL can’t tell detectives if a device has electronic evidence on it, they are able to find devices that humans might otherwise miss.